TV.com Reviews
The following are reviews write by TV.com's writer Lily Sparks * Also check out TV.com Reviews Season One The Plague Drawn and Quartered Coronation The Lamb and the Slaughter Blood for Blood Three Queens Reign "Three Queens" Review: Road Trip! - TV.com Three Queens” was one for the Mary and Catherine fans. I didn’t realize how much I missed their buddy dynamic, but this episode was a pure joy, from Mary inviting herself along on Catherine’s cross-country jaunt to Catherine’s impromptu Cockney accent. In a cruel twist of fate, just as Catherine was explaining to Mary how vulnerable royals are to a peasant uprising, a peasant uprising happened right in front of them on the damn road, and Catherine was off like a shot through a secret escape hatch in the floor of her carriage. Mary followed her off into the woods while the peasants and guards fought it out, and advised Catherine to turn her cloak inside out so they’d be mistaken for peasants. Good luck with that your majesties, you both look incredibly regal, but sure. Meanwhile Lola had learned that her family wanted nothing to do with her ever again. “Have a nice life,” they had written to her. “P.S. don’t write back this is absolutely your last letter. Last sentence right here, goodbye.” Which is heartbreaking, but thank God she has Kenna to give her some #realtalk about going full-on Jackie O and stockpiling her jewelry and wardrobe into an emergency escape fund. Lola was like, "Speaking of which, what happened to my big-ass dowry?" and she hastened to the 16th-century equivalent of Chase. Meanwhile, the besieged Queens of Fronce were hobbling through the woods getting hungrier by the moment. Luckily they spotted a town, but the provincial inkeeper refused to give them free food. Mary and Catherine introduced themselves as a mother and daughter team and Mary offered to do any kind of work to pay for some supper—milk a goat, wash goblets, do a puppet show in the corner of the tavern, anything. The guy was like, “Or you could serve drinks,” and Mary double-fisted two tankards like she’d been doing it all her life, all, “Done and done. Who has the heffeweizen and the IPA?! Hot soup hot soup, comin’ through!” Catherine, hilariously, was like, “The poor girl will just have to do the work for both of us,” and Mary threw her some side-eye like you wouldn’t believe. After Mary had slung enough beer in her ballgown, the two ladies sat down to eat through a roasted chicken and had a real heart-to-heart. Mary confessed that she had an ulterior motive to travel with Catherine: She wanted to see a gynecologist in Beauvais. Catherine was like, “Girl, that was the story of my life for my first 10 years of marriage. Welcome to hell.” I actually liked this moment a lot. Catherine was lecturing Mary on how to be a queen, as usual, but it was coming from a place of real empathy: "Been there, done that, got the Empty Royal Womb With the Whole World Watching T-shirt." And it was sort of lovely. Then who strolls, in but a pair of freakin’ impostors?! Okay, so this was fascinating. Because we’re operating in a time with no photography and, let’s face it, kind of dubious portraiture (everyone in the 16th century not painted by Hans Holbein looks kind of like a toddler), no one has the slightest clue what Mary and Francis look like. A false Mary and Francis had been making the rounds in flashy outfits and a flashy carriage, collecting money from villages for the Fronch army and setting fire to farms just to enrage the populace (ergo, the attack on the road). There’s actually a lot of historical precedent for this, and I loved the conceit of Mary and Catherine pretending to be commoners while listening to ridiculous stories about royal life (though apparently they NAILED it about the hatmaker). All the ladies at court bathing in a lake of pure “Ass’s Milk” is a concept that will make me laugh for a very long time. And if you don’t picture a butt with milk flowing out of it in a graceful arc when you hear those words, then you are just a very cool mature person and not me. Meanwhile, when Lola got to Wells Fargo or whatnot, the mean old banker was like, “Lola, the money is going to the father-in-law of the man your husband was pretending to be,” and Lola was like, “Damn.” But then while she was sitting on a day bed just chilling, Lord Narcisse strolled up and offered to help her with her dowry situation if she’d have tea with him. I don’t know what it is I like about these two so much. Individually they are both devious characters, but as a couple I find them endlessly intriguing. Tea involved two guys staring off into the middle distance while Narcisse and Lola acted like they weren’t there, which, awkward. And also a GAUNTLET! With about 15 fastenings?! Dude has a lot of patience with buckles. I will wear house shoes far outside the house simply to not have to deal with such fastenings, so this was a small wonder in and of itself. Then he gave her a very sexy (and effective!) archery lesson. Meanwhile, Mary planned to play a player: She and Catherine snuck over to Fake Mary’s room and Catherine broke into this Cockney accent and pretended she and Mary were con women lookin’ to hitch a ride with some fellow grifters and I was dying. Is there no end to how wonderful Megan Follows is?! Fake Mary was pretty buzzed, so she was just into all of it until Fake Joaquin Phoneix Francis burst into the chamber, all furious about Fake Mary talking to strangers. P.S. I really loved Fake Mary. She was hilarious. All of her reaction shots, her kind of loopy reminiscing, magnificent. A+++, Fake Mary. Anyway, Mary and Catherine decided to give the impostors their privacy while bickering, when the King's Guard showed up in that very inn! They were there to save the queens! Or WERE they? We learned pretty quickly that this King's Guard was a bad dude (albeit with great eyebrows), and now Mary and Catherine were completely in his power! Luckily the now-drunk Fake Mary blurted her whole sad story to them: The guard was her lover, he was going to kill them. Not even fazed, Real Mary unsheathed her trusty dagger. And Catherine unsheathed her... hat pin. Luckily Fake Mary was ready to turn on her treacherous lover, so when he stopped the carriage on a long dark road, she did as Catherine advised and tried to stab him between his fifth and sixth ribs. Unfortunately he was wearing both a solid metal vest and a shirt of chain mail, so it did literally nothing. Worse than nothing, actually, because her ineffectual metal-on-metal stabbing made him super angry, and he straight-up snapped her neck. Still, valiant effort nonetheless, Fake Mary! With literally no way out, their dagger gone, not a bath bomb of poison in sight, Mary grabbed Catherine’s hat pin and stabbed it right into the flank of a horse, who consequently trampled their captor to death. Thinking outside the box: It saves lives! So obviously that moment was great, but the revelation that Queen Elizabeth had sponsored the impostors also made me re-think the title of the episode: the three queens of "Three Queens" weren't Catherine, Mary, and Fake Mary, they were Catherine, Mary, and Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had infiltrated Mary’s guards and wanted to kill Mary for having worn the crest of England on her dress that one time. This was both a Season 1 tie-in and a thrilling moment for those of us who are obsessed with all things Tudor. Ugh, I can’t believe I not only unironically typed "all things Tudor," but that I'm still successfully resisting the urge to delete them because let’s be real, I am, I’m a Tudor dork, verily, that's just me, folks. Back at Court, Narcisse stopped beating around the bush with all this tea business and got real with his freaky self about what he wanted from Lola: He wanted to watch her take a bath in one of those giant wooden tubs. It was simultaneously freaky as hell and sort of romantic? It reminded me of the iconic Biblical story of Bathsheba little bit, famed throughout art history: I know, I know: Your panties dropped just looking at this. PRETTY HOT STUFF. The Lola body stand-in was a little more of a 2014 body-type style, and Narcisse was all about it, but then the actual Lola popped up right behind him, like, “BOO!” Like Mary, Lola had played a player and benefitted from the help of a doppelganger, and Narcisse respected the ruse, promising he would get her dowry money back to her after all and conceding that she was pretty good at all this courtly flirting stuff. Lola was like, “You think? (Gentle, lingering hand grab.)” After a VERY disheveled Catherine and Mary were retrieved by Francis and taken back to the castle, Catherine gave Francis a pretty touching speech about how Mary was a ride-or-die kind of woman, tell him that he should be honest with her rather than let her feel as if they were to always have a distance between them. Francis raced right up to Mary’s side and was like, “Remember all those awful things I said about you not being able to have babies? I was covering up about something else.” And Mary was like, “WHAT?! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE EVEN WORSE THAN WHAT YOU SAID?!” And Francis was like, “Could you just trust me to fix it on my own?” And Mary was like, “Okay. "(It better not be the herp, bro.)” And Francis was like, “Thank you (it’s not the herp babe, no worries.)” So now there’s a tacit truce between them, a tentative trust restored. Until next week, that is! By Lily Sparks The Prince of the Blood Reign "The Prince of the Blood" Review: Bed, Bath, and Beyond - TV.com A LOT happened in “The Prince of the Blood,” including the possible formation of a new love triangle and the arrival of insouciant new royal Princess Claude—and her pink fur cape—on the scene. Yeah, she’s great. [and Mary|Mary and Francis were already in an awkward phase when the episode began, so cut off from each other that they could barely stand having breakfast at the same super long table, and then Narcisse showed up with an intolerant-ass edict that he wanted everybody to sign to out the Protestants. And obviously Narcisse was being all, “I OWN you bro. Do what I say” about it, which, honestly, Francis, just kill this guy off already. You're the king. Hire an assassin or send him a poison jacket or make it a felony to take baths. Whatever it takes. Bash was FIENDING to do some murdering, I mean it’s been half a season since he let his blood lust freak flag fly. Seriously, it warmed my heart that Francis was able to come clean about murdering their father to Bash and Bash was so supportive about it. He all but gave Francis a high five. I really miss seeing these two interact, and this scene reminded me why. Bash do not be afraid to harness your Wiccan powers and throw Narcisse off a cliff. If y’all were able to kill the prince of Portugal in Season 1 with no consequences, then Narcisse should be a cakewalk. PLUS Narcisse had killed off the nanny, who was the only other witness to the confession? Like, please. What does Narcisse even have on you, Francis? Put a viper in his saddlebag. Okay I am weirding myself out with all these 16th century murder ideas. Still, by pushing Mary, Francis was also pushing her straight into the arms of[Louis Condé, who it turns out is a Prince of the Blood, a member of the Bourbons, and much like the sweet liquor that bears his name, he seemed to be making Mary the tiniest bit thirsty. The show seemed to firmly establish a winky little extramarital crush betwixt he and the young queen when she showed up to his door and asked him to give her what Francis could not. Instead of Francis and Mary teaming up to take on the world, it was Louis and Mary, and Louis seemed damned appreciative of Mary’s pure-heartedness and political prowess. Meanwhile, Francis decided to team up with Lola, which, shittiest idea ever dude. Catherine had retrieved an English Cipher from the room of the English traitor who tried to kill her and Mary last week and subtly dropped that it was a “Kill Whoever Free Card,” and Francis was like, “Oh huh cool can I borrow that forever please? Thanks." Francis sort of leveled with Lola, all like, “Look, Narcisse is a terrible guy. I can’t get into details (state secrecy) but could you do me a solid and put this envelope in his house? It will make me, you, Mary, and our son safe. Pretty please?” and Lola was like, “UGGGHHHH fine,” and hastened off to Narcisse’s manor, where they immediately got on the subject of baths and why bathtime is the best and hey, you know who happens to have a giant bathtub draped with a parachute of linen? This guy. Yes, Lord Narcisse went and filled up a bathtub the size of a dorm room and then, once Lola had settled in, he told her that if she wanted to know the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth about why he and Francis were at odds, she could meet him down in the drawing room. Like, what?! Dude must have emptied out half a pond to fill that bath, which is apparently on an upper floor, via bucket, and it hadn’t even cooled off! Another hint that Narcisse is delicately prodding Lola into a sub/dom situation in which he is very much the sub? I wonder. Once she’d dried off and hastened out of a piping warm bath before she'd even had a chance to get pruny, Narcisse surprisingly laid all his cards on the table: Francis had killed Henry. Regicide, baby! It happens. “Now when he asks you to betray my trust you'll remember who trusted you,” Narcisse smirked. Now, we’d seen Lola hide the envelope Francis had given her previously, but when she got back from Narcisse’s house/tub time she told Francis she hadn’t had the chance to hide it. Either it’s still hidden and she’s just lying to Francis because she idiotically can’t figure out that his interests and her child’s are one and the same, or she left it there as an ace up her sleeve while she figures out Narcisse. Let’s all hope it’s the latter. Meanwhile Louis founotestant noble and gave Mary a chance to convince him to thrust his neck out on behalf of Fronch Protestants nationwide. The next day, sure enough, when the edict was presented to Francis in the Room of Making Laws, the Protestant noble was nowhere to be found. But Louis, Prince of the Blood and Manliest Dude in the Room, came forward to be the hero that Mary wanted, needed, and deserved. Meanwhile, Claude’s first two days back at Court were pretty busy. She effed a bishop, snubbed Kenna, got her hair pulled by |ghosts, and GOOSED Bash out of nowhere. Oh NO. Claude you started out pretty cool but if you do ANYTHING to get in between Bash and Kenna, it’s over. You can join Lola, Satan, and McDonald’s breakfast stopping at 10:30am instead of 11am on my List of Things That Are Not Okay. After successfully stalling for time on signing the edict, Francis then decided he was going to pull a Condé and bravely tell Naricsse he could just go ahead and call the motherf-cking police, but he was not going to sign any such edict. He even went through with it, and then Narcisse dropped a Season 1 bomb I thought would never go off: Catherine and Mary had attempted to take Henry’s life before Francis even had the chance, and if Francis didn’t sign the edict he wouldn't just be sacrificing himself, he'd be sacrificing them. When Mary found out, she was justifiably furious that Francis would sacrifice the lives and peace of his people and she called him out as a coward and a total D and Francis retaliated by telling her she could just pack up and go to Scotland. Now, this really did shock and disappoint me, because at this point Mary’s innocence is moot: Narcisse has the goods on her, he can pin murder on her and Catherine as well as Francis. Why not just come clean about the whole debacle? But no, to paraphrase Xaime Hernandez, if Francis was on fire he’d go buy a can of gasoline. Instead of coming clean, Francis told Mary to get the hell out of Fronce, and what do you bet he thinks it’s for her own good? Let’s hope she takes Lola with her, because Lola clearly cannot look out for herself. Not five minutes after he got done ghoulishly describing the death of her baby to Francis, Lola and Narcisse were making out and then she slapped him all Christiana Grey like “You do not take before I give!” No. No Lola. I’m sorry. We all want a man who has a spa in his house and fetish for watching us simply relax in the bath, but yours also happens to be shit crazy and you’re essentially committing treason and ruining the lives of millions of people. SHAME. By Lily Sparks Terror of the Faithful Reign "Three Queens" Review: Road Trip! - TV.com By Lily Sparks Category:Season 2 Category:Reign Category:Reviews Category:Fandom